Dia de los Muertos

November 5, 2009

The week or so we spent in Santa Rosalia was primarily at a marina. We chose the marina in great part to make it easy for our children to play with the other kids here, but the side benefit for me was routine early morning walks. Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, comes just after Halloween.

A combination of Aztec traditions with the All Saint’s Day traditions brought by the Spanish, this is a day when Mexicans remember and celebrate their family and loved ones who have died. Marigolds were sold in town to decorate gravestones. Families trucked up to the cemetery on the mesa to gather around family plots- cleaning, decorating, eating, telling stories. I couldn’t bring myself to go on the actual “dia”, it felt intrusive, but loved the view into changes at the cemetery through these early morning walks.